How to make plarn

I just completed a project that I wanted to share. Many people have asked me how to do it, so I took some photos and here is my little tutorial.

Plarn is a portmanteau (fancy word!) blending “plastic” and “yarn”. It is made out of plastic bags, so go over to your grocery store and empty out the recycling canister. People will look at you funny (and your children will be embarrassed), but ignore them, you are doing good.  I like to use medium thickness bags (from Kroger, Publix, CVS). The ones from Target are a little thicker, but still manageable. And I don’t want speak ill of them, but the ones from Walmart are a little too thin, it’s OK to use them, but you may need to cut the strips thicker that the others. Don’t use produce bags (way too thin) or bags that are too thick, those are really hard to crochet.

Stack the bags by size, smoothing out the wrinkles.

Fold them lengthwise in fourths. Cut the bottom, and the top (handles). You will have a rectangle. If you are using Kroger or Publix grocery bags, cut the rectangle in 4 pieces, each one will be about 2.5 inches thick. If the bags are thicker, cut them a little thinner, and if they bags are thinner, cut them a little thicker.

When you unfold the pieces you cut, you will have many plastic loops. Separate them, and join them in a chain.

Here is a close up of the looping. From top to bottom: take one piece, insert it into the next one, and pull both ends. You will be basically doing a lark’s head knot. The pieces may stick to each other, just wiggle them around to tighten. The important thing is that the chain is flat, meaning the knots are 180 degrees from each other. All the links should look the one at the very bottom.

All right, now start rolling up a ball.

You are ready to crochet. I am using a size P hook (11.5mm), but you may use a smaller one. Because plarn is made of plastic, it is waterproof, and suited to make beach bags, rugs, grocery totes and many other projects. However, I am making mats that will be given to homeless people. Click here for the post with instructions.

Oh, don’t forget to take back the bags that you didn’t use and the unused end pieces back to the recycling trash can. Any questions? Send them in the comments.

Dear Congress: Pizza is not a vegetable. Tomatoes are not vegetables.

“If pizza is a vegetable, what’s a fruit salad? Twizzlers and a grape soda?” – Kermit the Frog. It’s a sad day when a Muppet has more common sense that people who were elected to serve the country.

Saturday Night Live – Weekend Update: Really with Seth and Kermit – Video – http://www.nbc.com.

Send a few cards, bring a smile to many people

I’m adding a button so you can see the information on how to send cards to service members, veterans and their families. Note that the deadline is Dec 9th. They can be handmade or bought, as long as they don’t have glitter. Other requirements can be found at the Red Cross blog.

Yoo hoo!

As you may have noticed, I have been on hiatus. I am gathering material and will start posting again after the Thanksgiving break. In the meantime, why don’t you check out this book about the pilgrims?

I’d rather not know…

Lee Svitak Dean of the Star-Tribune says that Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice is Ruth Bourdain. Apparently RB made a comment on Twitter during a closed conference of food journalists; therefore, RB is one of the people in that room. But you know what? I’d rather not know who it is. Once it is known, the autor won’t tweet as freely as before. Some years ago there was a blog for a Fake Steve Jobs. It was very funny and interesting. The author, Dan Lyons, was unmasked and the fun was over. Let’s keep the mystery. Please?

Ruth Bourdain: Just woke up from a nap. Had the weirdest dream I was @robertsietsema.

So good

For some reason I felt like roasting a chicken yesterday. I kept thinking about a French market I saw on a Paula Deen episode where the fat drips from the chickens on a rotisserie onto potatoes on the bottom. Mmmmmm… Alas, I’ve never been to France and don’t have a rotisserie, but I have a lot of cookbooks.

I settled on a recipe from Alton Brown’s “I’m Just Here For the Food“: Chicken in Garlic and Shallots. Mr. Brown says that it is his favorite dish of all time to cook; I figured it’s not roasting, but all that olive oil can only help the chicken. His notes said that the resulting oil would be good for making garlic bread, so I bought a loaf while picking up the rest of the ingredients.

It WAS delicious. You could taste the herbs and the oil in the meat. Buying a whole chicken and cutting it yourself makes it very economical, and it was very easy to make. Don’t forget to get bread. The kids loved dipping it in the oil. I saved the few garlic cloves that were not completely cooked down to add them to tonight’s mashed potatoes. Can’t wait.

Roswell Arts Festival 2011

I was at the Roswell Arts Festival last weekend, covering it for Brown’s Guides. Well, there was food. The area smelled so, so good.

Cake time!

One of my hobbies is cake decorating. I took my first Wilton class 6 years ago, and many have followed since. Check out the one I made last week:

It’s a working foosball table. The goal posts are not perfect and the players are a tad close, but the kids played with it, and it was delicious (chocolate fudge with strawberry filling). Overall, I was happy with it: my first kinetic sculpture!

Folk Life Festival

This gallery contains 11 photos.

Here are some photos from the Folk Life Festival. More coverage at Brown’s Guides.

The perils of democracy

I use Google a lot. I research topics, look for images, you name it. I also have to read each recipe I am cooking. For some reason, I can’t memorize any. But googling recipes just. does. not. work.

There are hundreds of variations for each one. For example, I needed a recipe for rolls made without yeast (don’t judge me, I was in a hurry and didn’t want to go to the store). I got 2 million results. I read various ones from the first pages and settled on one. I followed it to the T. Aaaand it failed miserably. I mean, it tasted OK, because well, a mix of flour, 2 sticks of butter and sugar cannot taste bad. But those were not rolls.

One of the great benefits of widespread internet use is that anyone can publish information. Millions of people can share their knowledge. But they can also share very inaccurate information, which is the main problem with internet recipes. And just because a recipe has 320 likes, or appears on the first page of results, it doesn’t mean it works.

When you buy a cooking book, you know the recipes have been previously tested in a kitchen (fine, maybe not all of them, but I assume publishers still have standards). So, if you follow the text, you get reasonably good results; that being said, when I used the recipe for quick bread from the Joy of Cooking, that was a mess TOO. Gah!

Earlier this year, Google introduced “Recipe View” which is aimed at helping the cook, and index the information out there. I have not used it much, and I haven’t heard about it much either, which to me it means that it is not that great yet.

Sigh. Books are still better than the internet for some things.